Constant Reader Classics Corner

[Sherry]

Let's start discussing this book August 1, 2008. The Country Girls Trilogy

[Barbara]

It's August 1st and we can start discussing The Country Girls. First, a little bit about Edna O'Brien from http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/eobrien.htm
This is an excerpt. You can read the rest of the article at that link.

Edna O'Brien was born in Twamgraney, County Clare. Her family was opposed to anything to do with literature and later she described her small village "enclosed, fervid and bigoted." When O'Brien was a student in Dublin and her mother found a book of Sean O'Casey in her suitcase she wanted to burn it. After finishing primary school O'Brien was educated at the Convent of Mercy in Loughrea (1941-46). In Dublin she worked in a pharmacy, and studied at the Pharmaceutical College at night. During this period she wrote small pieces for the Irish Press. In 1950 she was awarded a licence as pharmacist. Married in the summer of 1954, O'Brien moved with her husband, the Czech/Irish writer Ernest Gébler, and two sons to London. In Ireland she read such writers Tolstoy, Thackeray, F. Scott Fitzgerald. The first book O'Brien ever bought was Introducing James Joyce by T.S. Eliot. She has said that Joyce's Portrait of the Artist made her realize that she wanted literature for the rest of her life.

O'Brien wrote her first novel, THE COUNTRY GIRLS (1960), in about three weeks. The story is partly based on the author's own experiences being brought up in a convent. "The novel is autobiographical insofar I was born and bred in the west of Ireland, educated at a convent, and was full of romantic yearnings, coupled with a sense of outrage." (O'Brien in Writers at Work) Although some of the reviews were good, many readers were outraged in Ireland and the book was banned there. The Country Girls continued in The Lonely Girl (1962) and Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964). The trilogy traced the lives of two Irish women, Kate and Baba, from their school days in the Irish countryside to their disillusioned adulthood and failed marriages in London. The friends have a strict Roman Catholic upbringing, which comes into conflict with their sexuality and their dependence on men. Kathy's relationship with a married man is fruitless. She starts an affair with Eugene, whom she considers a great lover but not much else. Her marriage with Eugene is unlucky, and they separate. Baba marries a man who offers her financial security. Because of the graphic sexual content of the story, the whole trilogy, and six of the author's subsequent works, were banned in Ireland. "While feminists have not been fond of her work because of her heroines' chasing after men, ''The Country Girls Trilogy'' is a powerful argument for feminism. To watch Kate and Baba and their various partners making war, not love, reminds us of ignorant armies that clash by night." (Anatole Broyard in The New York Times, May 11, 1986) In 1986, the three novels with an epilogue were published in one volume as The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue.

[Barbara]

When I initially nominated this book, I intended to read only the first book, The Country Girls. However, now that I am immersed in the worlds of Kate and Baba, I think that you really can't appreciate the first book without reading the other two, plus the epilogue. I'm currently in the middle of Girls in Their Married Bliss (I love the irony of that title).

I also wondered when I nominated it if it really qualified as a classic. Now, I have no doubt. I have traveled in Ireland three times and, while I still see the vestiges of Kate and Baba's world, the changes since the early 1960's are profound. It makes the gap in time seem much wider that it is chronologically.

As I followed Kate and Baba's lives and wondered why they didn't reach for more, I remembered what the expectations for women were in Ireland during that time period. While I wanted to give them a good kick in the pants, O'Brien also made me understand at a very basic level why they did what they did. Her writing often reminds me of Alice Munro's though I think that Munro is better at it. They both dig in and describe the motivations, feelings and interactions that no one else really wants to talk about.

So, what did you all think?

[Ricki]

I finished the trilogy - the part I liked least was The Country Girls. At some point it reminded me of Marjorie Morningstar (herman wouk, for no apparent reason except perhaps the background of one of the girls), definitely Frank McCourt and Joyce - all of which I preferred. It certainly comes from the genre of Irish writing that portrays the country character coming away from the background. At times I thought she used some apt turns of phrase for descriptions ( will get back to this on a later post). In the later sections (or short books or novellas or whatever) the stories and character development surrounding Baba kept me going and gave it a slightly greater depth than the first book.

[Graceann]

I'm glad it's being enjoyed - clearly many people do find something of merit in it. Mine was the only negative review at Amazon. I appreciate what Barbara says about needing to read the other two in order to appreciate The Country Girls, but I won't be spending any more time on this particular story. If it hadn't been for the discussion, this one would have failed my 50-Page Rule with a resounding thud.

As it was, I gritted my teeth, hoping the story would improve and that I wouldn't have to continue to pray without success that Baba would be beaten to a bloody pulp (preferably by Caithleen, because if Caithleen did it, it would mean that she had finally grown a spine).

When I posted my review at LiveJournal as part of my Books I read in July message, a friend of mine who read it as a young woman when it first came out mentioned that perhaps the problem was that it just hadn't aged well, and that women who weren't teenagers in the 60s might not be able to relate. I have no idea if this is true - I only know that I don't do well with novels where there are only victims and bullies. I found The Country Girls to be relentlessly grim, with the deaths, beatings, the affair that, had it started just a year or two earlier, would have been paedophilic, the attempted rape and the constant emotional abuse from Baba. A lot of ugliness to pack into 185 pages.

[Melissa]

I just finished The Country Girls and will probably seek out the sequels in the library at some point.

One thing I found quite interesting (in comparison in part to von Arnim's technique in The Enchanted April) was how much attention O'Brien lavishes on descriptions of the natural world and how it reflects or affects or disturbs the remembered mood of the narrator. There were frequent observations about the sky, the smells, the rain, the changes in light and dark.

O'Brien's flowers in particular have distinct personalities and emotional states -- as though the plants embody the moods and aren't merely passive or inactive stimulants of our own responses.

As for Graceann's comments above, in my reading as a male with feminist political leanings, but without the personal experience of this kind of victimhood, I found the story of Caitleen and Baba not simply disturbing but also enlightening.

[Denise]

"It was crowded with briars and young ferns and stalks of ragwort, and needlesharp thistles. Under these the ground was speckled with millions of little wildflowers. Little drizzles of blue and white and violet-little white songs spilling out of the earth. How secret and beautiful and precious they were, hidden in there under the thorns and young ferns."

Caitlin makes this observation while walking to school, terrified that she'll run into her father.

Don't know where I was going with that thought, but there it is.

[Al]

I read all 3 books and the epilogue and I think that gives the full picture - at this point I feel like I would be missing out if I had not read them all.

In many ways, it is hard to imagine that the life the girls lived was typical a mere half-century ago. But I think it did a great job showing the reader what life and expectations and options for country girls was like. there were definitely times when I was frustrated and annoyed with them, but mostly I grew to be sympathetic to their situation and I especially found it interesting how my feelings for and about Cait/Kate and Baba evolved over time.

I definitely think this was a good fit for the classics corner and whether by design or not, the books we have read here recently (Surfacing, Enchanted April and now Country Girls trilogy) explore feminist issues. I'd even include The Blindfold in that group too, as it also has an interesting take on male/femaile relationships, gener and perception.

Overall, the books make me realize how lucky I was to be born in the late 1960s. I think it is easy sometimes to feel nostalgic for earlier generations when there were less possibilites in terms of career, marriage, children, education, but after reading a little of any of these books, I think you quickly realize that the more options and possibilities are far preferable than the alternative.

I haven't read too many Irish writers (I've attempted Ulyssess, but have never finished), but I was very impressed with O'Brien. It definitely makes me want to read more Irish writers - those who influenced her and in turn those she influenced.

I loved how her descriptions of the country contrasted with the hovels they lived in later in the cities.

[Denise]

I agree with Graceanne that it was a bit grim, but apparently that suited me. I became involved in the lives of Caitlin and Baba. Like you Al, my feelings about them evolved.

I may love stories that celebrate the triumph of the human sprit, that spotlight strong people overcoming tremendous odds, but I was ready for a book like this. I didn't see it as a story of victims and bullies, I saw it as a story of people muddling through the general messiness of living.

It's a credit to O'brien's skill that I felt sympathy even for the abusive drunken father. It was this underlying sympathy that I really appreciate. Things don't alway work out, people often disappoint each other, and sometimes they just can't step up when they ought to. She's able to portray far-from-perfect characters without condemnation.

I loved the descriptions of the country, too. I thought about how hard it would be to leave that for the grime of the city, but it didn't appear that Cait or Baba gave it a thought in their escape.

[Barbara]

You make a good point, Denise. There are no heroes or villains in this first volume. You have some feeling for why everyone does what they do.

I think the relationship with Mr. Gentleman is worth exploring. Alice Munro talks about these connections between older men and young girls in her stories. They often are not consummated, as in this case. These situations were more common than most people want to admit when I was young, at about the same time this book was written. I'd like to think that as the self-images and expectations of women have changed that this has changed also. I also thought it was interesting that Kate describes Mr. Gentleman in such nonattractive terms but treats them as if they are desirable qualities.

[Ricki]

Denise,

What the girls were escaping from was the poverty, the lack of opportunity and the parochialism of the country. Small and fairly isolated communities no matter where they are can be constricting places for those who want something outside of the norm. The combination of that and Irish Catholicism had (and probably continues to have) that effect in the past on some in the Irish countryside and they moved towards the cities both inside and outside of Ireland.

[Marian]

I read the Country Girls in Jan., started New Year's Eve, then gave up in disgust in the middle of book 3. But decided to try finish it for the discussion. I didn't like the characters. Were we supposed to feel sorry for the girls? Their lives were no different from others, maybe a little better than most. One of my favorite authors is Maeve Binchy who is also Irish & writes about Ireland, from the women's point of view. She is much more sympathetic & her characters act like real people. If I went to school with Caithleen & Baba, I would avoid them. Ireland, like the rest of the world has changed, but Edna O'Brien seemed to go out of her way to emphsize the unpleasantness.

[Ruth]

I just finished The Country Girls, and I will continue on and read the trilogy and the etcetera. I just plowed on through TCG in less than 2 days it was so readable, and I got so engrossed in the story.

One reason I'll continue reading was that TCG didn't really end, it just stopped.

I can't say I'm enthralled because I like the charaters. Baba is insufferable and Caithleen is a spineless wonder. I spent most of the book wanting to shake one or the other of them.

Maybe I missed it in the reading, but I kept wondering what time period this was set in. Thanks to those of you that set me straight. It read so like a more old-fashioned book I kept thinking it was much earlier. Then something would happen that made me think it was later.

I'm going to have to give some thought to the picture she paints of women of that time. I was her age in the early 1950s, and altho I do recall how much our world revolved around men, I don't think we were such complete airheads as these girls seem to be.

[Wilhelmina]

I am now feeling very ancient. I first read The Country Girls way back in the '60s. The book was very popular at that time as a part of the fascination with all things British, Irish and Welsh, from the Beatles to British comedies (Georgie Girl, Morgan, etc.) The second novel, The Lonely Girl, was the inspiration for the film The Girl With Green Eyes in 1964. It was a very popular movie - girls ran around trying to look like the lead actress, Rita Tushingham, with varied degrees of success.

I do understand that many Constant Readers had not been born or were in cradles at this time and I think that this is part of the problem in finding sympathy for the characters in this book. I don't think that these girls were airheads; they just had no blueprint for making good decisions. These girls were trapped between the oppressive nuns in the convent and the crushing prospect of staying home and marrying a local boy, having a huge number of children (1960s Catholicism = no birth control), and probably dying at an early age. This is IRELAND - did anyone see the movie The Magdalene Sisters? These girls tried for a better life in the only way they could - make a break for it and hope to find a decent man to look after them. These would not be our choices, these would not even be the choices of most American young women in the '60s, but these were brave choices for these girls in these circumstances.

[Barbara]

Excellent observations, Mina. I saw a documentary recently about Irish popular music in which some of the female musicians talked a bit about attitudes toward women in Ireland. While they emphasized the infinite progress made, they talked about jokes in the past about women that put them on a par with farm animals. I also got the feeling that a little of that was still around. The way these books were received in Ireland after they were published is very telling. I found the following in a Salon interview with O'Brien:

You come from a country that many writers seem to leave. Is it better or easier to write about Ireland from outside?


My first book, "The Country Girls," was a simple little tale of two girls who were trying to burst out of their gym frocks and their convent, and their own lives in their own houses, to make it to the big city. It angered a lot of people, including my own family. It was banned; it was called a smear on Irish womanhood. A priest in our parish asked from the altar if anyone who had bought copies would bring them to the chapel grounds. That evening there was a little burning. My mother said women fainted, and I said maybe it was the smoke. When I wrote my second book ("The Lonely Girls"), the opinion was the first was a prayer book by comparison. My mother had gone though the book and inked out any offending words.

So I was made to feel ashamed, made to feel I had done something wrong. It's hard enough to write a book at all; you have to dig and dig and dig into your unconscious, come up with some kind of story, and language, emotion, music. And you'd like a small amount of support from someone you knew. So if you have any degree of self-protection at all, you get out of that place, if you're going to keep writing.

James Joyce lived all his life away and wrote obsessively and gloriously about Ireland. Although he had left Ireland bodily, he had not left it psychically, no more than I would say I have. I don't rule out living some of the time in Ireland, but it would be in a remote place, where I would have silence and privacy. It's important when writing to feel free, answerable to no one. The minute you feel you are answerable, you're throttled.
You can't do it.

[Wilhelmina]

I should have included a little information about the Magdalene laundries, the topic of the excellent movie, The Magdalene Sisters. Here's what Wikipedia says:

Magdalene Asylums were institutions for so-called "fallen" women, most of them operated by different orders of the Roman Catholic Church. In most asylums, the inmates were required to undertake hard physical labor such as laundry work. In Ireland, such asylums were known as Magdalene Laundries. It has been estimated that 30,000 women were admitted during the 150-year history of these institutions, often against their will. The last Magdalene Asylum in Ireland closed on September 25, 1996.

(Originally created for prostitutes, these institutions were filled with) unmarried mothers, developmentally-challenged women and abused girls. Even young girls who were considered too promiscuous and flirtatious were sometimes sent to an asylum.

The women were typically admitted to these institutions at the request of family members or priests. Without a family member on the outside who would vouch for them, some penitents would stay in the asylums for the rest of their lives, many of them taking religious vows.

...in 1993, an order of nuns in Dublin sold part of their convent to a real estate developer. The remains of 155 inmates, who had been buried in unmarked graves on the property, were exhumed and, except for one body, cremated and reburied in a mass grave. This triggered a public scandal and became local and national news.

Any girl whose behavior was considered "sinful" could be sent to these institutions where they were imprisoned, abused, and worked unmercifully. There is plenty of good information about these nightmarish institutions available - just Google.

[Marian]

Before we get to far from the book under discussion, I would like to explain my negative impression of the characters. Kate & Baba were middle-class girls, not farmer's daughters. they had the opportunity for a secondary school education, no small accomplishment for a girl in rural Ireland in the 1950's. Instead of using their education, the girls' path to sucess in life was a series of relationships with men. Regardless of portrayals of the sensationists "Madeline Laundries" the majority of religious women in Ireland and elsewhere were concerned, dedicated women, sometimes stymied by the overwhelming power of the male-dominated Catholic church, but none theless trying to do good and help the girls to make the most of their abilities. 98% of the Sisters I have known in my life were kind women. dedicating their lives to an ideal that they believed would improve the lives of those in their care.
I spent the 1960's raising my babies, aware of and cheering on the women who were taking control of their lives. Looking back, I do not see how sleeping around with a "higher class" of men lead to any improvement to the status of women. These girls had the means to better their lives through their own abilities. Instead, they bounced from one affair to the next. The stories take place in Ireland, but the US, Canada, Britain & all of Europe could have served as the background.

[Denise]

1996? The last one closed in 1996? Now that suprised me. I wasn't shocked that they ever existed, but that they existed in such recent times floored me.

Barbara, I like the excerpt you included above. I am impressed with Edna O'brien for having the clarity to know what she wanted and the strength to do it without support. Her own parish burning the book seems a bit harsh.

Since O'brien had also gone to a convent school, I wondered if the scene where Caithleen and Baba get themselves expelled was a fantasy of hers.

[Denise]

Marian, I think I was writing my previous post while yours went up, so I missed it.

I do agree with you that the story could have taken place anywhere.

[Wilhelmina]

Every country, every culture, every society has its own particular good and bad points. I think that we are being very unfair to the author if we don't take into account the particular conditions of 1960's Ireland. This is an author who knows the time and place in her books and portrays it very well. These books were banned and burned in Ireland. I do not believe that Baba and Kate had an abundance of choices open to them. Certainly no one in this novel was presenting them with wonderful choices. They certainly made their share of mistakes and then some, but I think that they grabbed the only opportunities that they could think of. Oprah frequently quotes Maya Angelou as saying, "When you know better, you can do better." I saw no evidence in these books that Baba and Kate knew better.

[Ruth]

I went ahead and read the whole trilogy and epilogue, and they've blended together already so it's impossible for me to separate them for purposes of critique.

These young women may not have known better when they started, but they must have been particularly unobservant not to have learned a few things from their mistakes. They just kept doing the same things over and over, and expecting different results.

But my main dissatisfaction with the book has more to do with the way it is structured than with the subject it espouses. Taken as a whole, the trilogy drags us through the same experiences again and again and again--to the point where I got bored and stopped caring.

The trick would have been for O'Brien to have somehow let us know about the girls' behavior without a forced march through so many similar events.

It's like the old writing-class saw. How do you write a book about a boring man without making the book itself boring? How does one write a book about repetitious behavior without the book itself being repetitious?

[Ricki]

Marion,

I agree with you about the fact that the girls did have both the background and the capacity to make different choices.Kate, after all, had received a scholarship to the convent - she was no backward parochial girl. Doesn't she talk about reading Joyce at one point or am I confusing her with another character (Im really sorry I can't check as I've already passed the book on). Besides - I've known and still know, and have worked with, many Irish women over here, some teenagers long before this was written and all of whom have come from small villages in Ireland. All of them, most of whom are Catholic and ex-convent girls, made more self-affirming choices and didn't rely on men. Perhaps the tragedy of the characters is that there was nothing that forced them to make those choices - they just did and then got caught into a strong current which took them to even further unfulfillng situations.

[Mary Ellen]

I only read the 1st book in the trilogy, disliked it and have decided, based on the discussion here, not to read either of the others.

Like Graceann, I found it difficult to get through the book because I didn't like either of the main characters: I agree that Baba was a bully and Caithleen was spineless. (Baba's cruelty to Caithleen reminded me of the portrayal of young girls in one of Margaret Atwood's books (maybe Cat's Eye?). In fact, I thought Baba was the biggest oppressor Caithleen had. Much worse than the nuns!

Added to that, every man in the book was creepy. Surely not ALL men in 1950's Ireland were on the hunt for barely pubescent girls?

Finally, I found it hard to keep track of how old the girls were. It seemed that little time passed from the opening, when they were just in 8th grade, to their moving to Dublin on their own. I must have missed the clues, as it made no sense to me that in such an outwardly overprotective society two 15 year olds could move to the big city & live on their own.

Anyway, this may be it for me with Edna O'Brien!

Mary Ellen

[Denise]

Mary Ellen, now that you mention it, there wasn't much break between being booted from the convent and moving to Dublin. I'm not sure how old they were then.

As far as men go, I thought Hickley was kind and good, and I thought Baba's father was a decent man in an unhappy marriage. I also don't think that it's fair to assume the characters in the story are supposed to represent all of Ireland.

In the first book I disliked Baba, also. I was very sympathetic to Caithleen. She was sweet child, yet she lost her mother, had an abusive father, and a bully for a best friend. Would 'spine' really have helped her that much?

Anyway, in the next 2 books I grew to appreciate Baba. I'm including the next quote for those of you stopping after the first book. The third book opens in Baba's point of view and partially explains her early bad behavior:

"We've always been friends--as kids in Ireland we slept together and I used to push her out of bed on purpose, hoping she's crack her skull or something. I liked her and all that--I was as jealous as hell of course--but she was too sedate and good; you know that useless kind of goodness, asking people how they are, and how their parents are."

Ok, maybe that quote doesn't help put Baba in a better light, but I did end up really appreciating her.

[Wilhelmina]

I also grew to appreciate Baba mare as the books progressed, particularly in the epilogue. For those who did not read the entire trilogy and epilogue, the narrator voice shifts from Kate to Baba. I don't want to spoil the books for those who are still reading them, but to me, this shift reflects the increasing strength and survivor mentality of Baba. Did anyone have any thoughts about the shifting voice?

On a lighter note, my clearest memory of my first reading of The Country Girls was being terribly shocked when Kate compared Mr. Gentleman's anatomy to an orchid. When I was a teenager, we were all infants.

[Barbara]

Kate and Baba weren't always likeable characters but they are very real. They both, particularly Kate, have self-destructive qualities which are relatively common. I compared O'Brien's writing with Alice Munro's in one of my earlier notes and I keep thinking of her as I read the discussion. So many of her characters make decisions that make you want to jump through the pages and shake them, but she catches the same qualities in people that O'Brien captures here. Kate had the most potential in many ways, but she is crippled by her longing for something, maybe what she lost when her mother died? Maybe her fear of her father left a little hole in her character? Baba has the example of her mother and she makes choices that are not far from those of her mother before the conversion.

I liked the voice changes from Kate to Baba, Mina. The contrast brought home the difference in their abilities to survive. I was also surprised at how much I liked Baba in the end.

I had forgotten about the orchid image. If it shocked U.S. young people, think about those priests!

[Al]

I too was shocked by how much I ended up liking Baba. At the end of the first book, I really did not think I would ever be a big fan of hers. I credit O'Brien with developing that character in suprising ways.

I do think that Barbara brings up a great point in terms of looking at the mothers' examples - in many ways, the girls choices are not as suprising in that light. I had not really thought of that before.

And Barbara, you have mentioned Munro before to me in the discussion of a different book. I have to move her higher up on my to read list!